Treatment for Tuberculosis (TB) Treatment for TB was only available from about 50 years ago. Active tuberculosis, if not treated, will infect on average between 10 and 15 people every year. If active tuberculosis is not treated it can kill and treatment currently reaches only about a quarter of people with Tuberculosis.
Antibiotics are used in the treatment of Tuberculosis (TB). Antibiotic treatment therapy is lengthy and you have to take them for six to 12 months to completely destroy the bacteria. The length of treatment and the type of drug that is needed is determined by your age, overall health, the results of susceptibility tests, and whether you have TB infection or active TB.
It is the length of drug treatment that causes so many difficulties in developing countries as well as in the West. Poor supervision, incomplete treatment, doctors and health workers prescribing the wrong treatment regimens, or an unreliable drug supply not only fails to treat TB but can lead drug-resistant TB.
Surgery is now very rarely used to treat TB.
Drug-resistant Tuberculosis TB Treatment
Strains that are resistant to a single drug have been documented in every country. A particularly dangerous form of drug-resistant TB is multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) This disease is caused by TB bacilli resistant to at least isoniazid and rifampicin, the two most powerful anti-TB drugs. Rates of MDR-TB are high in many countries including the former Soviet Union.
People infected with the drug resistant strain will pass on the same drug-resistant strain when they infect others. While drug-resistant TB is generally treatable, it requires extensive chemotherapy, sometimes up to 2 years of treatment. The medication required for drug resistant TB is extremely expensive, often more than 100 times more expensive than treatment of drug-susceptible tuberculosis. Treatment is often more toxic to patients and not so well tolerated.
Control of Tuberculosis (TB)
In the 1959s the US and many European countries introduced immunization programs. As a result the incidence of TB fell dramatically. In the late 1980s there was a resurgence of TB cases in the large cities of the US and in Europe. This has been for a number of reasons, among them;
Homelessness
Overcrowding in shelters, prisons and in homes for the poor
Increased immigration from countries with a high incidence of TB
Drug abuse
HIV/AIDS
TB Immunization important for people with HIV/AIDS
The BCG vaccine is now recommended for everyone who does not have a natural immunity or who has been exposed to the disease. Anyone who is HIV positive should also be immunized as up to 40% of people with AIDS or who are HIV positive become ill with tuberculosis. This is in marked contrast to the normal 10% infection rate of people exposed to to TB.
